I Public meetings were held throughout Vermont and in many parts of the country. At these gatherings, I almost always ask a very simple question: is our health care system broken? And the answer I always get: Yes! The American health care system is broken. It's incredibly expensive. It's terrifyingly cruel.
Today we spend almost twice as much health care in other countries on the planet. The US spent just $14,570 per person on healthcare, while the US spent just $5,640 in Japan, $6,023 in the UK, $6,931 in Australia, $7,013 in Canada and $7,136 in France, according to the latest data. Yet despite our massive spending, we remain the only major country on the planet that we do not guarantee health care to all as a human right.
Insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies continue to make huge profits, while over 85 million Americans are either uninsured or underinsured. The outcome: Approximately 68,000 people in our country die each year because they can't afford to go to doctors when they need it, and over half a million Americans go bankrupt due to medically related debt. In the US today, 42% of cancer patients ran out of total savings of their lives within the first two years of diagnosis, with one in four people declared bankruptcy or lost their homes in 2022 due to foreclosure or eviction.
That's insane and indescribable. You should get cancer in the US.
In terms of life expectancy, we live on average four years shorter than people in other wealthy countries, while the typical working-class people in the United States are seven years less than the wealthy people. There is also the questionable distinction that the infant mortality rates are the highest in other wealthy countries on the planet.
Just like our entire healthcare system, our primary care system is getting worse. Tens of millions of people live in communities today and even if you have insurance, you can't find a doctor, dentist or psychologist, but others have to wait months before they can be seen. Despite our large medical costs, we don't have enough doctors, dentists, nurses, mental health practitioners, pharmacists, and home health workers. One of the four Americans cannot afford to buy the medicines their doctor prescribes.
All these reasons, and so on, I am proud to be able to reintroduce Medicare for everyone in the Senate. My colleague, Representative Pramila Jayapal, has introduced this same bill in the House of Representatives.
Our law provides comprehensive health care coverage to everyone at no out-of-pocket costs, and unlike current systems, it offers the complete freedom of choice when it comes to healthcare providers.
No more premiums, deductions, co-payments, no endless forms or fight against insurance companies.
Comprehensive refers to dental care, vision, hearing aids, prescription medications, and coverage of home and community-based healthcare.
Importantly, for everyone, Medicare is giving Americans the freedom to switch jobs without losing their health insurance. Under our laws, healthcare becomes a human right, guaranteed to everyone, not in the interest of our work.
Is the Medicare for Healthcare System expensive? yes. But while providing comprehensive healthcare for everyone, it is much cheaper than the current dysfunctional system. This is because it eliminates the bureaucracy, profits, management costs and false priorities that are inherent in the current for-profit system. In fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that Medicare for all people will save Americans $6500 billion a year.
Under Medicare, there is no longer a military force that an army of insurance employees bills us. They are hitting us to tell us what is covered and what is not covered and paying our hospital bills. This simplicity will not only significantly reduce administrative costs, but it will make life much easier for patients, doctors and nurses who have to once again fight the nightmare of insurance companies' bureaucracy.
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As we speak, Republicans are working overtime to make a bad health situation even worse. They want to pass a “settlement bill” that will abandon millions of Americans from the health care they have, in order to destroy Medicaid and give billionaires a massive tax credit.
Obviously, we have to beat that horrible law. But we have to do more and more. We cannot simply defend the current state of healthcare and affordable care laws. Laws that provide large amounts of corporate welfare to large insurance companies and large pharmaceutical companies – premiums, deductions, joint payments, medical prices are skyrocketing.
Now is the time to rethink American healthcare. Now is the time to declare that health care in our country is a right, not a privilege. Now it's about facing the greed and power of special profits that will make a big profit from a cruel and broken system. Now is the time to pass Medicare for everyone.
Enacting Medicare for all is a transformational moment for our country.
It will not only make people healthier, happier, and increase life expectancy, but will be a great step forward in creating a more vibrant democracy. Imagine what that means to the people of our country if there is a government that represents the needs of ordinary people, not just strong corporate profits or billionaire campaign donors.
This is America. We can do that.
Bernie Sanders is a US Senator and a ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. He represents Vermont and is the longest serving independent in Congress history.
